Grants Search Results

Golisano Children's Hospital is committed to providing excellent care to all children, adolescents and young adults who are being treated or have been treated with cancer in their region. This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Currently, developing a cancer drug in the lab and bringing it to the clinic takes years or even decades to accomplish. Although many initial drugs are promising candidates, they ultimately fail because they have no effect, off-target effects, or are simply too toxic. One exciting avenue for cancer treatment involves modifying a patient's immune cells by adding chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to their surface. Peptide-centric CARs (PC-CARs) can recognize protein fragments called peptides on the surface of cancer cells, which originate from cancer proteins within. Dr. Yarmarkovich's laboratory has developed PC-CARs against one of the most common childhood cancers called neuroblastoma and is currently pursuing clinical trials. To rapidly develop new PC-CARs, they have used new advancements in artificial intelligence to redesign their PC-CARs to recognize another upregulated neuroblastoma peptide called CHRNA3. Eventually, their research can be expanded to treating all cancers alike. This work is being completed under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Yarmarkovich.

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the most common pediatric soft-tissue sarcoma in the United States, with approximately 400 new cases annually. Outcomes for high-risk RMS remain dismal, with three-year event-free survival rates as low as 20-30%. There is an urgent need for innovative therapeutic strategies that are more precise, have less toxicity and have significantly improved efficacy and survival benefits. A subset of RMS tumors have mutations in the RAS gene family, therefore, exploiting these mutations as therapeutic targets is an attractive and targeted therapeutic strategy. Dr. Ladanyi's research aims to test a recently developed RAS inhibitor (RMC-6236) in preclinical patient-derived disease models harboring mutations in RAS. This agent is in clinical trials for adult cancers with some RAS mutations. The St. Baldrick's Foundation Summer Fellow will help to generate the preclinical data necessary for a Phase 1 clinical trial testing RMC-6236 in children with RAS-driven RMS. This work is being completed under the mentorship of Dr. Marc Ladanyi.

This grant funds a student to complete work in pediatric oncology research for the summer. Neuroblastoma, medulloblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, and desmoplastic small round cell tumors overexpress human epidermal growth factor receptor II (HER2) and cluster of differentiation (CD24) on their surface. Radioimmunotherapy targets those antigens using antibodies. Radioisotopes bound to those antibodies kill the cells. Radioimmunotherapy causes toxicity to normal tissues. Two step pre-targeted radioimmunotherapy reduces this by allowing excess antibody to clear from normal tissues before radiation is delivered. This is further optimized by the self-assembling and disassembling (SADA) antibody platform. Antibodies aggregate within the tumor and disperse outside of the tumor. Therefore, antibodies bound to the tumor remain in the body longer while excess antibodies are cleared faster. This study will compare two-step pretargeted radioimmunotherapy with the SADA platform to one-step radioimmunotherapy against tumors with HER2/CD24 via laboratory testing and a model study. This work is being completed under the mentorship of Dr. Nai-Kong Cheung.

Golisano Children's Hospital is committed to providing excellent care to all children, adolescents and young adults who are being treated or have been treated with cancer in their region. This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

The Melodies Center at The Bernard & Millie Duker Children's Hospital at Albany Medical Center is the only Pediatric Cancer Center in the region that provides multidisciplinary approaches to cancer care. Their main goal is to improve the cure rate of cancer by providing cutting edge treatment for children, adolescents and young adults with cancer. Through Children's Oncology Group (COG), the center is able to provide current clinical trials and best treatments available. This grant supports a Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

Whilst it is well known that damage to our DNA can cause cancer, it is still not fully understood what causes such DNA damage in many childhood cancers. Dr. Wang and colleagues recently made a breakthrough by discovering that our own body produces a natural toxin called formaldehyde that causes DNA damage and an aggressive blood cancer in children. This was a shocking discovery as it had previously been thought that formaldehyde mainly came from industrial chemicals found in factories. Dr. Wang's overall aim in this research proposal is to unravel exactly where formaldehyde toxins are made in our body. This knowledge can help to identify children at risk of developing blood cancers, and to develop strategies to modulate the production of formaldehyde as novel therapies against blood cancers.

The first year of this grant is is generously supported by RowOn 4 A Cure, a St. Baldrick's Hero Fund. Rowan was a happy, spunky, funny, smart, and smiley little girl. With that same tenacity, she faced her cancer diagnosis of a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia when she was three. Despite intense chemotherapy and radiation and a successful cord blood transfusion, Rowan relapsed after a brief remission. The family relocated in search of another treatment option but before one could be found, Rowan sadly passed away. RowOn 4 A Cure was established to honor Rowan and continue her fight against AML by raising awareness and funds for research to find better options for treatment of relapsed AML and ultimately, a cure for the disease. Her family remembers Rowan’s perseverance during tough treatment days and intend to make an impact as they “Row On” to find a cure.

Hepatoblastoma is the most common liver tumor diagnosed in early childhood, and new therapies are urgently needed to improve survival and reduce treatment related morbidity. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that harnesses the body's own immune system to target and attack cancer cells. While some immunotherapies have been very successful against certain tumor types in adult patients, they have been largely unsuccessful in treating pediatric tumors. This demonstrates how little we know about how the pediatric immune system responds to tumors. Using samples and models of hepatoblastoma, Dr. Cabric's research aims to identify the key immune cells involved in recognizing and responding to hepatoblastoma. Identifying the key immune cells involved in tumor immunity, and mechanisms that allow tumors to escape detection and deletion by the immune system, will allow us to find novel targets for future immunotherapies that work in children.

This grant is funded by Allied World, a global provider of insurance and reinsurance solutions.

The Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trials Program at Montefiore Medical Center has grown significantly since it's creation 2 years ago. The goal of this program is to bring early phase clinical trials to patients with relapsed and refractory cancers in our underserved, resource poor community, as well as to patients across the NY-NJ-CT (tristate) area. This grant supports a Clinical Research Coordinator to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a pediatric-focused Clinical Research Associate to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a pediatric-focused Clinical Research Coordinator to ensure that the children of central New York have a variety of clinical trials so that they do not have to leave the region to attain this level of care, often their best hope for a cure.

This grant supports a Clinical Research Coordinator to ensure that more kids can be treated on clinical trials, often their best hope for a cure.

Children, adolescents and young adults with recurrent or refractory Osteosarcoma have a very poor prognosis, with a dismal 6mo overall survival of less than 5%. Presumably, this poor prognosis is in large part secondary to the development of resistance to chemotherapy and radiation. More recent studies employing therapies that release and activate the patients’ immune cells, called T-cells, and even targeted T-cells have not improved this poor prognosis. Dr. Cairo proposes to investigate novel and innovative methods of combinatorial immunotherapy to circumvent known mechanisms of resistance. Together with colleagues, he proposes to investigate at the bench (in the laboratory) and in models with osteosarcoma alternative methods of combination immunotherapy including natural killer cells (NK) that we have been engineered in the laboratory to also circumvent mechanisms of resistance and to additionally express a single or dual target that are present on the osteosarcoma cells.

They further plan to investigate the efficacy of adding other immunotherapies to enhance the function and persistence of these targeted NK cells with antibodies, and two different NK activating cytokines. They will also investigate the optimal combination of this immunotherapy in children, adolescents and young adults with recurrent or refractory osteosarcoma to determine the safety and efficacy of this approach. Finally, Dr. Cario and team will determine what are the genetic and immune mechanisms of resistance after these novel combinatorial immunotherapy approaches utilizing state-of-the-art laboratory techniques. The goal of this grant is to develop novel combinatorial immunotherapy that will significantly increase the overall survival in children and adolescents with poor risk osteosarcoma.

To make a significant impact for kids fighting osteosarcoma, five funders have banded together with St. Baldrick’s to support this grant – The Helping Osteosarcoma Patients Everywhere (HOPE) Super grant supported by Battle Osteosarcoma, the Faris Foundation, the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund of Children’s Cancer Research Fund, the Children’s Cancer Fund NY (supporting the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital and New York Medical College) and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

CAR-T cell immunotherapies, treatments that use T cells constructed to recognize tumors and kill them, revolutionized how doctors treat children with B cell leukemia (B-ALL). These killer T cells recognize a specific protein expressed on the surface of the leukemic cells. Unfortunately, leukemia frequently relapses and often finds ways to "switch off" the expression of this protein, making T cells unable to track and kill them. This notion is called "antigen escape," as the tumor finds a way to escape the immune treatment. Dr. Aifantis plans to identify ways to avoid antigen escape by boosting the expression of the surface recognition protein. The study aims to validate such mechanisms in an organism using CAR-T cell models and sequencing patient cells. At the same time, Dr. Aifantis will design screens that will help identify surface antigen-specific regulators, so researchers can one day create combinatorial protocols using CAR-T cells and targeting specific antigen surface expression regulators.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Cellular and Immunological Approaches to Prevent Relapse: Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium (PBMTC). For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: National Marrow Donor Program, Minneapolis, MN.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Precision–based Therapy for Childhood Leukemia. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Cellular and Immunological Approaches to Prevent Relapse: Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium (PBMTC). For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: National Marrow Donor Program, Minneapolis, MN.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Precision–based Therapy for Childhood Leukemia. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Precision–based Therapy for Childhood Leukemia. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA.

This institution is a member of a research consortium which is being funded by St. Baldrick's: Precision–based Therapy for Childhood Leukemia. For a description of this project, see the consortium grant made to the lead institution: Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA.